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“My dad’s being released from the hospital today,” he managed to say. “I was on my way there now.”
She nodded, glanced around, and that’s when he saw that she was blinking back tears. “Maybe I could ride with you and we could talk along the way? It’s important,” she added when he’d been about to shake his head. “There are some things I need to tell you about Jack.”
Until she’d added that last part, Egan had been prepared to go through with the headshake and a refusal. He wasn’t sure he could handle this, especially not today, but he also couldn’t just go back in time and prevent this woman from showing up out of the blue.
“All right,” he finally said. “But it’s a short drive.”
“That’s okay. If it’s all right, can I leave my car here? Then, I can Uber back to get it.”
Egan didn’t point out that Uber services were in short supply in Emerald Creek, but there was a taxi. Sort of. Henriette Miller, who was pushing seventy, had bought a used taxicab and provided that service when the mood suited her. Still, he wasn’t going to worry about how Melinda got back to the ranch. That was her problem.
“Look,” he said as they walked to his truck, “if you’re thinking about going to Jack’s life celebration this afternoon, that’s not a good idea.”
He didn’t get into the details about what it would do to Alana or Tilly to have the other woman show up. It’d be a hard blow for both of them. Well, for Alana, anyway. Tilly would likely just keep on believing that Jack hadn’t had an affair and cause Tilly to believe Melinda was lying.
“I hadn’t planned on going to that,” Melinda said. “But I have been keeping up with the details about it on social media.” She didn’t add anything else until they were in his truck. “Uh, does Jack’s wife know about me?”
Egan took a moment to decide what or what not to say. “She knows he had an affair.” He set the cookie on the dash, started the engine and glanced at her as he drove away. “Why did you come to see me?”
She took a deep breath. She also took her time answering and must have decided the scenery was a good way to avoid eye contact with him because she pinned her gaze to the window.
“You were his best friend,” she finally said. “Jack worshipped you. Loved you. I just figured if anyone knew about me, it’d be you.”
Egan cursed, and he didn’t bother to keep it mild or under his breath. “Well, he didn’t tell me so that blows your theory about him worshipping me.”
“It doesn’t,” she assured him. “If he didn’t tell you, it was probably because he wouldn’t have wanted you to think the worst about him.”
“I sure as heck would have done that since he was cheating on his wife,” Egan snarled, but he immediately had to amend that. “No, I wouldn’t have thought the worst about him, but I would have given him hell for what he was doing.”
Melinda smiled, but he didn’t think there was any humor in it. “Yes, he said you would. Jack also said he was going to tell you.”
“Well, he didn’t.” Egan’s voice was still a snarl, but some of the fury was gone. Some. Not enough, though, for him to ease the white-knuckle grip he had on the steering wheel.
“I guess he didn’t get the chance.”
“Yeah, there was a lot of that going around.” Alana hadn’t gotten the chance to try to resolve things with her husband. Egan hadn’t been able to talk to his best friend about Colleen walking out on him. And Jack hadn’t had time to spill about his dicking around with this woman.
Egan reined in and cursed himself. All right, maybe he would have thought the worst about Jack, but his reaction was being filtered through the feelings that Egan had developed for Alana.
Deep feelings.
That made him hurt as much as she had over Jack’s affair. Back then, though, three years ago, Egan figured he would have had an entirely different mindset.
“I drove Jack to RAF Mildenhall where he was flying out to go see you,” Melinda continued after several moments. “He told me that his wife had found some charges on his credit card and that she’d confronted him.” She swallowed hard. No smile now. “Jack broke things off with me. He said he loved his wife and that he wanted to make things work with her.”
Oh, that brought back some of the fury. “If he loved her, then why did he start seeing you in the first place?”
“It’s complicated,” she insisted.
“Don’t you dare say it just happened,” he snapped when he remembered what Remi had told him.
“Okay. Then, I’ll say it shouldn’t have happened, but it did.”
“Maybe you can justify that if it’d only been once, but it wasn’t. You had an affair with a married man.” Once again, he reined in. “And a married man had an affair with you.”
“Jack and I were together for three days. So, I guess that’s technically an affair, but for part of that, we were together for a memorial service.”
Egan frowned and pulled into the lot of the hospital. He parked and turned to her, waiting for an explanation. Before she could say anything, though, he caught the movement from the corner of his eye and turned to see Alana making her way toward him.
